Fighting On The Side Of Peace

CAMEO

Every Friday, Bruce Martin and a group of his friends gather for a peaceful vigil at the federal building in Hartford, quietly protesting the U.S. trade sanctions against Iraq.

Martin, 73, of New Britain, has traveled to Iraq and seen firsthand the sanctions' devastating toll on the people of Iraq, especially the children. Though Martin once was on his way to becoming a U.S. Marine, he failed the physical, and not long after, his eyes were opened to a way of life devoted to trying to stop wars, not engage in them.

And so Martin chose instead to become a peacemaker -- a Quaker by religion, and an advocate for disarmament, serving as the religious sect's Connecticut director of the American Friends Service Committee until recently, when he retired. But he has found retirement is a good place to continue to be a force for peace, and so Martin marches on -- hoping to encourage nations and people to put aside differences and work together.

It all began in Pennsylvania in the mid-1950s, when Martin's five children were in elementary school and they came home with notes from school about bomb threats and the need for every child in town to wear a 25-cent identification bracelet.The bracelets were to identify the children ``in the event of the need to evacuate the schools,'' Martin said. At first he thought the idea was reasonable, but later he began to hear the protests of a few Quaker mothers in town.

Their position was that ``it only made the likelihood stronger -- the more prepared you get, the more likely you are to do it,'' he said. ``I searched them out and thought they were right.'' The connection changed his life and the way he viewed the military and national policies.

``That really was my first exposure to any idea contrary to what everyone goes along with,'' Martin said. Martin came to Connecticut in 1971, ``to hopefully attempt to alter the severe impulse that this state had to produce war machines.''

Through demonstrations, protests and letter campaigns, he worked to persuade factories in this state to convert to a new peacetime economy to follow the Cold War.

Many of the plants' activities, he says, are ``dead-end streets,'' and the companies and their workers are ``so addicted and dependent on that money that it's like a drug.''

Martin said his group found nooks of support in Congress and elsewhere through the years, and made many trips overseas, including to Iraq to see firsthand how U.S. economic sanctions are punishing innocent people.

These days, Martin and his colleagues are working to bring attention to a military proposal to create a national missile defense system he says cannot work, but can only feed unhealthy fears between nations. ``It would be too horrible to use,'' he says.

James van Pelt, a friend, said this about Martin at his retirement party: ``Bruce has been an anchor of our state's peace community and a leader in the continuing struggle to develop the path of Moses and Jesus, Buddha and Gandhi, King and Chavez into a highway leading to the world that sustains `the best of what we are.'''

When asked how he would sum up his life's work now that he's retired, Martin smiles and says he sees a group of retired men at the McDonalds at Westfarms mall some mornings, and now he's one of them, so it's good to have a response ready when someone asks. ``I think I would say it became clear to me that we had to abolish the use of violence as a way of relating to other countries and to each other. I've spent my time attempting to persuade people in such a way that we have a more peaceful world and a more just world. I hope we can pull it off.''

Cameo is a weekly feature. If you know of someone who would make an interesting profile, please call Amy Nixon at 860-241-6443 or 800-524-4242, Ext. 6443 or e-mail her a suggestion at Nixon@courant.com.